Women of Essondale

Some Kinda Woman! Stories of Us

How can you know the person you love? No matter how close, there are still mysteries and secrets — hidden things that can reach up and steal someone right out from under you.

The following is a true story.

A nurse falls in love with a man in uniform. And marries his best friend few months later.

She works at Essondale Mental Hospital, during World War II, at a time when people who caught syphillis, died of it. Before the antibiotics came in.

Just after the tranquilizers became available.

When many of Essondale’s residents were not mentally ill at all – rather simply disabled, recovering from rheumatic fever, post traumatic stress, or retired prostitutes, too sick with sexually transmitted diseases to continue working.